I kind of like that idea, actually…
I think “a Jewish Jewess” sounds even cooler! 
(and yes, Political Correctness be damned…)
They’re different parts of speech. “Jewish” is an adjective, “Jew” is a noun." Using the noun form can sometimes come off as a reductive – “Jewish” is part of who a person is, “Jew” can sometimes reduce a person to just that one characteristic, which comes off as crass.
Yeah, I prefer “Jewish” to “A Jew”. Never really thought about why before.
Another vote for preferring “is Jewish” to “is a Jew”. I have no issue with “Jews” instead of “Jewish people” though.
I think it sounds bad not because there’s something inherently strange about the word’s connotations, but rather because it’s usually only anti-Semitic ignoramuses who use “a Jew” to the exclusion of “Jewish”. Wrongly or rightly, the word has been stained by those who use it sinisterly, and regular people instinctively shy away from it for fear of sounding like a bigot.
I think the Jew/Jewish squeamishness could be related to the Jap/Japanese situation. Someone from Japan is a Japanese person, and ever since WWII calling them a “Jap” is highly offensive–although the word “Jap” in itself should carry no other connotation than “Japanese”.
In a related vein, we just had a Sexual Harrasment training. One of the quotes used was of a person complaining that co-workers were calling them “a transgender” instead of just “transgender”–clearly grounds for a sexual harrasment complaint. I never knew this was offensive (Hell, I am still not entirely clear what “transgender” actually is. I understand transsexual (both pre-op and post-op) and transvestite, transgender is new to me.)
I can accept that. I think. However, there are innumerable references to Jews in the Old Testament, whereas I’ve never seen a reference to an “Ire” or an “Eng”. British certainly is often reduced to “Brit”, and Eire is the auld name for Ireland, but not for the people (or did it used to be “Eire-ish”?). Then again, nobody refers to the Jew people, but rather Jewish people. It would seem that the word Jew being seen as a pejorative may be a product of more recent persecutions, nay? I’m going to have to take this up with our new friend and her husband.
ARRGH! I heard that in Cartman’s voice!
I would add that using Jew as a verb is always offensive, for reasons left as an exercise for the reader.
FTR, saying ‘a Jew’ rather than ‘Jewish’ can also be referred to as’dropping a hard J.’
All about context, though for the most part it makes me bristle in the same way ‘a gay’ does, for the reasons DrFidelius mentions. But I rarely hear it except in an ironic tone, among Jews and gentiles.
My wife’s a Jew, and calls herself a Jew. In fact, “Jew” seems to be the word of choice both in her family and in our temple. “Jewish”, in contrast, seems a little precious.
There is nothing about being a noun instead of an adjective that makes Jew an uncomfortable word or reduces a person to that characteristic. If it were, calling a person a Christian would be similarly uncomfortable. It’s purely the fact that Jew has been and still gets used as a pejorative (“you Jews gonna jew me out of my money”) that makes it unpleasant. The Jap comparison is apt.
To the OP, I was befuddled by that dialog as well.
I think the exchange was,
Which made me think:
A Jew… ess? A Jewess?!? Isn’t that right up there with “negress?”
I guess that the character’s intent was “a Jewish person” but the mismatched grammar threw me off.
Up until my middle teens, I thought calling someone a Jew was an insult, akin to calling someone a n*gger, and that the proper term was “a Jewish person.”
To this day I cringe just a bit when I hear “… a Jew.”
For Og’s sake, don’t be awkward. If you’re relaxed, the other party will usually follow suit.
FWIW, I find this whole thing to be entirely about age. I’m in my early 20’s, and one group of my friends loves to tell stories or jokes including phrases like “so a bunch of gentiles walked up…” or “a bunch of jews strolled in…”. One Jewish kid’s father overheard the jokes and was incredibly insulted - and it was his son telling the joke! My age group finds religious and ethnic differences comfortable. We’re not going around telling Holocaust jokes, but we find humor in the everyday differences and parodies of our backgrounds.
That said, you CAN use Jew as a pejorative - but it is exactly the same as you could use any religious descriptor someone’s not comfortable with. Like my mom saying "Oh my God you’re…an agnostic!?!
The joke from Community was as funny but older…like someone my parents’ age wrote it.
-lindsaybluth, irreligious but ethnically half a Jew
I was watching the BBC documentary “Ways of Seeing”, and at one point the narrator refers to a “homosexual”. This was incredibly jarring to my modern ears, where homosexual is an adjective rather than a noun. I agree with the previous posters who pointed out that by using “Jew” as a noun rather than the adjective “Jewish”, they are needlessly reduced to this ethnic or religious quality rather than being considered a person.
I am not Jewish, either, so take this with a grain of salt, but it tends to be the anti-Semitics who talk about “the Jews”, so even when someone says “I’m a Jew” I jump a bit. It’s probably just my white middle class shame.
That better be Kosher salt.
I agree with this.
But I routinely refer to myself as a Jew. I won’t let the jerks ruin a perfectly good and useful word.
Nevertheless, I can see why it sounds “off” to some people.
You know, I remember reading some young adult book–maybe a Judy Blume book? Anyway, the protagonist’s friend’s mother always said (IIRC) “person of the Jewish persuasion,” thinking that was way more polite. :rolleyes: Like others have said, trying too hard to avoid saying Jewish or Jew is way more offensive than just calling a Jew a Jew.
Maybe it’s just me, but I see “Jewish” as referring more to the religious side and “Jew” as referring more to the ethnic/cultural side. I dunno why, though.
–A person who’s totally a Jew but isn’t particularly Jewish
I’m not Jewish, but I’ve always felt that “a Jew” or “The Jews” sounds antagonistic if not hateful. But not only that, it’s hard to think of a way one could use the word without implying that the Jewishness of the person or persons under discussion is somehow at the root of whatever it is you’re going to say about them. Consequently, whatever you would say applies more or less to all Jewish people. It would be the same with “the Christians”, and so forth.
On the other hand, I’d have to acknowledge an exception in some historical or geographical contexts, like when one discusses the Sephardic or Ashkenazi Jews. Speaking of the latter, I’ve been interested to observe that they often use the word “Jewish” to mean Yiddish, which I don’t think I’ve ever heard from a Gentile.
Words acquire connotations from how they have been used in the past. There is nothing inherently wrong in someone saying that I am a Jew, but the word has a acquired a patina of ridicule. I would also prefer their saying that I am Jewish. There is no logic to this, but that’s the way it is.